Post-Perfectionist Campaigns Reframe Beach Body Expectations

Pushing back against the often-unrealistic aesthetics of #summerbodyready (12.8 million views on TikTok) – and in contrast to controversial “body-shaming” campaigns of previous years – astute brands are promoting body acceptance, allying with Gen Zers’ appetite for more relatable post-perfectionist beauty (first explored in Beauty: Gen Z-Based Brand Engagement).

• I Am Proud Hijacks #SummerBodyReady’s Negative Narrative: For its Body Proud campaign, the British beauty brand collaborated with American positive affirmation content creator Alethea Francis Crimmin. Tagging her TikTok videos with #SummerBodyReady, as well as the campaign’s hashtag #nobodylikeyou, ensures that when users looking for summer body inspiration search for the former hashtag, they encounter the latter as well, including I Am Proud’s uplifting self-love content with the message that “every body is a summer body”. The brand’s also encouraging users to upload their own body-positive videos.
  
  
• Dove’s In-Person Inclusivity Activation: After a brand survey revealed that “42% of fat people in Brazil have stopped going to the beach because they don't feel welcome”, Dove’s A Seat in the Sun campaign distributed size-inclusive beach chairs across popular beaches in Brazil.
  
  Chairs were bookable for free, via scanned QR codes on brand posters near 100 beach kiosks, resulting in more than 3,000 rentals and 312% uplift in Dove Brazil organic social media mentions.
  
  
• Estrid Emphasises Shaving Is an Option, not an Expectation: With brand research showing nearly half of global millennial and Gen Z women stress over body hair at the beach, the Scandinavian razor brand’s out-of-home, Instagram and TikTok campaigns (1k views) remind women: “Bushy or bare, the beach doesn’t care. Just promise yourself to let your skin see summer.”